Regarding Grief

Grief comes upon us in many guises and we often wonder what it was about the little nuance that caused us to weep with a sadness best left undefined. It can ride in on the wings of a random hummingbird to touch our cheek as a kiss blown from across the room or it might crash over us as a Banzai Pipeline wave, one we’d have much rather ridden the long board on or even watched from afar.

It would be best if we could embrace and accept it as our own but it just isn’t always ours to enwrap. Our empathy for another, one stung by the sharp barbs of loss, locks us into their hearts and we feel as they do but we can only wrap them in our arms and hold tight while they are wracked by nameless pain. It is theirs to claim, they are ours to love through it.

When it is our own though, do we push it away, run from it into some escape hatch, or deny it all together? Make it our own I say, let it rush through us to cleanse and bring new joy at some forgotten memory of our lost one. Hold the best of them to ourselves to inform and shape a future without them at our side. After a while the rivers of feeling will run clean and pure like the rivulet from the base of Bridalveil Fall.

Writer’s note: the Ahwahneechee Native Peoples called the fall Pohono which means “Spirit of the Puffing Wind”. I ran across this today while looking into the fall and after I’d already used the simile, ‘as a kiss blown from across the room’. The Ahwahneechee called the falls Pohono because the fall is often blown sideways and during a lite flow of the creek may not reach the ground directly below the origins of the fall.

I note it because I think grief can often be like this - blown here and there by winds of time and emotion only to find rest in places we can’t predict.

Peace friends.

To Laugh or To Cry?

(courtesy of my storyblocks.com account)

Romans 12:15 “¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

Phil had me read a short, powerful scripture the other morning during our Zoom Men’s Meeting. The impact on me was immediate and many-faceted and continues to expand for me as I write this post. Let me lay the foundation that I would have hoped would have been known to me a bit more than twenty years ago but, as it turns out, was laid down in the beginning, as in ‘In the beginning was the Word…’

It was an earlyish Mission Arizona (MAZ) and when the senior high students were doing a project on one part of the reservation (Gila River Indian Community) and I was off with Julia, James, and the junior high students painting the interior of the Sacaton Presbyterian Church. Earlier in the week Julia and I were talking about things and a subject came up where she wanted to know what was in store for her and a tad frustrated at the progress in the area under discussion. In my hubris, I told her I would pray about it and come back to her with something. Nothing seemed forthcoming as the week rolled on.

Thursday is generally the last day of major work during MAZ with Friday the day we clean up and put the final wrappings on our projects so that we can enjoy a fun evening before trekking home on Saturday. Our painting wore on deep into the night while our paint supplies ran short. So we instructed the students that only an adult was to pour paint from the 5-gallon bucket into the individual cans and roller pans to make sure we didn’t waste any.

It was somewhere around one a.m. Friday morning when I went outside to pour paint for someone and found a good quart had been spilled on the sidewalk thus wasting the paint and making a mess that needed to be cleaned up. I probably said some inappropriate things as I went down on my knees to scrub the paint up as best I could. I know I mumbled things like, ‘those thrashers!’. I love those kids but junior boys and girls are thrashers. Everybody stayed clear of me while I worked out the week’s frustrations on the sidewalk.

A coyote jogged through the parking lot, stopped, and stared at me while cocking his head to the side to help him figure out what he was seeing. I sat up from my scrubbing and had to laugh with him and that is when I heard as clearly as I hear His voice, “It is not for you to know or determine. It is for you to laugh with her when she laughs and the cry with her when she cries.”

Reading that scripture on this Wednesday morning for me was like jumping off the rocks into a cold alpine lake. It was shocking and it awakened me to more of God's. When I was spoken to it was directly out of scripture and for twenty-three, twenty-four years, I had never realized it.

The implication is plain to me – if I want to hear God speak to me, I need to read the Bible. While I’m reading it, He will speak to me. While I’m praying or being silent, the Lord will speak to me from the Word. Homer Simpson said it very well for me, “D’oh!”

A more timely aspect of this passage from Romans is how much need the world has for us to pick it up this scripture and live it. We need to grab hold of this and in Christian empathy and concern weep with those who are in mourning for the loss of family and friends and their way of life. And we need to laugh and celebrate with those who overcome and persevere and find accomplishments in spite of a world gone sideways.

We must resist those who live in the ‘me-first’ moment. You know, the attitude that led to the ‘America First’ movement and the continued and ever deepening of America’s isolation from a world shrinking in on itself in misery and international effects? That is not of God and never will be. We are to be in the world. Not of it, no. But in it and among those who weep and laugh, celebrate and mourn. If we are to be Christ’s ambassadors in the world, we need to become really good at heeding this short verse.

Find someone and mourn or laugh with them as required.

In His grip

jerry

(images courtesy of my storyblocks.com account)

I Don't Understand

I Don’t Understand

I don’t understand Lord. How could this happen? We prayed and kept praying. Knocked and continued to knock. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to figure it out and can only hug my friend in her loss. Even then, how will this help us know why?

I think at times like this, when we lose someone dear to our hearts, especially our own children, that we lack the capacity to ken the reason for their passing. You could explain it in our own language, plain English for me, or any number of languages throughout the globe. I doubt I could even understand where it to come from the mouths of angels via the gift of tongues. It hurts and I doubt. This vexes me, a purported man of faith, to have no answer.

It is one thing to lose someone after a long and full life, say a parent who has aged and deteriorated, or even a spouse who has done the same. The emptiness and loss are real for this but we understand that we age and have a finite time on earth to live. We can grow to accept the loss though never really come to love the emptiness. But to lose someone in the fullness of their life struck down by random rebellious cells in their own body, someone who can bring so much to so many and ease their pains, how do we live with that?

As you now Lord, I lost a friend to a random and senseless accident well before he even touched on the potential of his life. I still don’t understand that one. You know I became bitter over it and the whole thing drove a wedge between you and me. It was only a miracle at the hands of a bunch of junior high kids praying over me that I was cured of the bitterness. I still have the question but have accepted it as the way things are.

But, from where will the miracle come for my friend? How will she understand, accept, and move along? The family needs peace, Kristy’s struggle has worn them out. A mother and father grieve. A husband and little boy are deeply saddened. Friends hang their heads and weep. Clients, people who’ve felt healing and wellness at her touch, have an empty spot in their hearts. Our community has a hole where once a bright and warm light emanated and provided comfort.

I don’t understand it and can’t give them the explanation they feel they need to come to grips with the deep longing for a better outcome of the struggle. I can only pray and hope for a miracle to find them, envelope them, and give them a purpose for continuing down the trail of life without her.

And so I do pray and hope and look for peace. Bring it Lord, quick and sure, bring peace to our hearts.

In Your grip Lord,

jerry

I Could Not Bring Myself to Write It

A Storyblocks Image

Malachi 3: 16-18:  

“¹⁶Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.

^“17They will be mine,” says the Lord Almighty, “in the day when I make up my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as in compassion a man spares his son who serves him. ¹⁶And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.” (NIV)

I sat down this morning to write judgement on certain people who lead us on a path of destruction. Matthew quotes Jesus about them in his Gospel in the 24^th chapter, verse 4 and again in verses 10-11. I cannot even quote it. I cannot write the judgement. I am weak and I fear. I’m well aware of the hypocrisy strewn about within my person and I know that to write it is to bring the judgement upon myself. Even to think it now and avert my fingers from the task brings a level of conviction I can scarcely stand.

See how the font follows my line of thought? I love to write posts in Comic Sans because it has style and there is some part of me that enjoys the whimsy of using a font with such a name. I cannot do it here. Someone must pay.

I confess to praying judgement. I have a young friend I made at VBS who should be entering her middle school years carefree; free to be creative and funny, smart and witty, cute and sassy. She carries the burden of abuse. I’m pissed off that I didn’t see it happening and have castigated myself that I allowed it. I’ve prayed for judgement on the perpetrators and know that it will not rest upon solely one person. I remember Jesus quote in Luke 17: 1-3.

I confess to praying judgement when I read my own daughter’s ‘Me Too’ Facebook post. I railed at whomever it could have been. It was by the thinnest of margins that I held back from trashing the office where I sit to write this. I wanted my own hands round their necks, my own fists to pummel the ba-jesus out of them. I feared that I could have contributed in any way.

I am powerless in this but for one thing. Rereading our Men’s Group scripture from this past Wednesday, I was looking for one thing but found something else. A bit of hope. Some direction. And so it sits atop my post as the only scripture I’ve quoted though I’ve referred to a couple of others.

The children have it right. They gather in protest as victims of this latest mass shooting and they have it right, correct in thinking they must speak out so we’ll listen. The children brought to our country in the arms of their parents who thought it was an adventure, a trip to a better life, only to live in fear have it right and must speak up so we will listen.

And those of us who fear the Lord must listen to the children and talk with each other. The Lord will listen too. If we fear the Lord and honor his name, he will listen as we talk and wisdom will be found and we will be his.

And those who ‘listen’ and offer one thing to the children in exchange for their own hateful desires? Well, look back at Luke 17.

In fear and trembling at my own weakness but forever in His grip, 

jerry

I Am Saddened

(photo courtesy of 'Storyblocks')

I was saddened when I heard the news, the news that fifty-eight people had been killed and over 500 others gunned down in a senseless act by one man. This feeling is akin to that devastating shock I felt as I watched the plane crash into the second tower in New York just as my TV had warmed up for my morning bit of news while I was getting ready for work. Mornings turned into mourning.

Senseless acts, both of them. And countless more between and before and sadly, countless more to come after. We live in a broken world and nothing will fix it except for the unrelenting application of God’s grace obtained for us by the resurrection of Christ. And that will only work in partial doses until God’s Kingdom is established in full, on the earth. I am afraid they will remain senseless to us, that we will never truly understand the ‘why’ behind the actions of people who visit atrocities on innocents.

I won’t try to explain it here, I can’t.

What are we to do?

I am saddened also by what I’ve seen as I scroll along my Facebook news-feed. Saddened by those who see fit to politicize such a tragedy before the scope of it is fully known. You know the ones I’m talking about. They are on every side of the issues being bullied about from their social media pulpits. ‘We need more gun laws!’ elicits the response ‘It is our right to bear arms!’ We may well need more laws or to actually enforce those we have and it may well be our right to own and carry weapons. However, our duties lie elsewhere.

I was saddened by those who chose to take aim at protesters while praising the heroes of the day. The message to the protesters was weakened by doing this just as the message of praise for the hero was diluted.

Just as I’ve been saddened by the politicos in response to this latest mass shooting I was saddened by our response to the 9/11 attacks. ‘United we stand!’ they said. ‘We will never forget’ we said and so we pooled our resources and we ‘got them’ all the while destroying more innocent lives by many times than what were taken from us on 9/11. We missed an opportunity for a Godly response.

What are we to do?

I suggest we let the dust settle. Take a knee, take both knees, to the turf and let the dust settle. Let it settle all around us, on our shoulders, upon our heads, and on our backs while we are bowed over in prayer. Prayer for the souls of the dead, for the healing and recovery of the wounded, and for peace for all those folks who were there and experienced a terror words can only go so far in describing. We should humble ourselves first and let the impact settle in around us. Pray for God’s Kingdom to come and come quickly. We need to pray for the heroes of the day, those who shielded others, those men and women who ran into harm’s way to stop the madness – pray for their emotional scars to be wiped out so that heroes can walk upright and be ready again. So the lambs and doves can sleep without trembling. Pray so the angles need not shed more tears.

Friends, let us stand down from our stumps and get off our soapboxes and instead kneel by our beds at night, by our desks during the day, and humble ourselves while the dust settles.

In His grip,

jerry